


We Are Coming Home

by allthislight



Series: The Butterfly Effect [2]
Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: F/M, figurative and actual cinnamon rolls, say hello to Nurse Melbourne, two people being kind to each other and falling in love in the process
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-23
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-16 21:19:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8117950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthislight/pseuds/allthislight
Summary: Alexandrina Victoria Kent is born in 1986. In 2016 she becomes the youngest head of trauma the Royal London Hospital has ever seen. Everybody expects - no, wants - her to fail. Everybody except her head nurse, William Melbourne. She loves the quiet nights, when they are both on duty and can just sit behind the nurses desk and read their respective books, talk about terrible movies or play each other their favourite songs.He quietly loves them, too, but there are of course also the hectic days when it feels like a bus crashed into a train and an airplane fell on top of it and every single person involved lands in their emergency room. When there is blood everywhere and more people die than they can bear and they don’t know where their head is at, he tells her to breathe, she squeezes his hand in passing or he puts it on her shoulder and they say, “We will get through this,” and believe it.





	1. A Kindling Light

**Author's Note:**

> I told myself I wouldn't post this until I'm done with the whole thing, but I'm starting to hate it more and more with every read-through and if I don't start publishing it now I probably never will.  
> This is a Hospital AU with all that entails. If you are worried about eventual triggers, please contact me and I'll be glad to help you out, although I think there shouldn't really be a problem in this chapter. More info about what's to come at the end of the chapter.  
> Ah yes, I think I should mention that you don't need to have read Part 1 of the Series in order to understand this. They are completely unrelated AUs, except for the fact that Victoria is a terrible snorer and Melbourne is strangely obsessed with her eyebrows in every single one of them.

 

 

> **to kindle** : _to become lighted up, bright, or glowing, as the sky at dawn or the eyes with ardor._

 

* * *

 

Somewhere, someone steps on a butterfly and everything ends up quite differently than you would expect.

Alexandrina Victoria Kent is born in 1986. In 2016 she becomes the youngest head of trauma the Royal London Hospital has ever seen.

While she is surely incredibly talented and of a sharp, brilliant mind, she is also young and inexperienced and she can feel the hyenas circling, their eyes on her, thinking she only got the job because of her father, because she is of a family that’s generally considered to be medical royalty.

They send her down wrong corridors, pettily insert ‘Doctor Can’t’ where her name should be, slam doors in her face and place bets as to how long she will last. She hides in dark, forsaken corners where she hopes no one will find her as she tries very hard and fails not to cry.

Everybody expects - no, wants - her to fail. Everybody except her head nurse, William Melbourne.

He sees all this and shows her around the hospital, tells her how to get the jammed drawers in trauma room two open, gallantly holds the door for her until she passes, ushers her into the on-call room with the most comfortable beds and does her paperwork for her when she’s too exhausted to stand on her own two feet.

She looks at him and sees him inserting IV lines effortlessly into veins no one else can find, how he analyses x-rays almost faster than she does and can’t help but ask him why he never became a doctor. He offers her only a piece of the truth.

“Well,” he says after a second’s hesitation, “my parents only have a small flower shop and there was just no money to pay for it.”

She takes a moment to process this. Of all the things her family lacks, money has certainly never been one of them.

“That must be hard.”

“Not particularly Ma’am. I quite enjoy my job now.”

She can see he means it and suddenly finds herself saying, “Please, call me Victoria.”

He looks a bit dumbfounded.

“Victoria, Ma’am?”

She nods in confirmation.

“Yes. I’ve never liked the name Alexandrina.”

He smiles in return.

“Victoria it is, then.”

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t take long and they start calling him _Her Majesty’s nursemaid_. He ignores them, inserts extra night shifts into their rosters and feigns innocence when they come to him, confusion edged onto their faces.

He doesn’t tell her about this until much later, but when he does, she almost chokes on the coffee he brought her and can’t stop laughing until her pager alerts them to another emergency. While they hurry down the hall, he can’t help but feel very smug and proud of himself. Even though he would normally condemn such childish behaviour, he knows he’d do anything just to see her smile at him again.

 

* * *

 

He must be in luck because it tends to happen more and more often and he starts filing her smiles carefully in his mind so he can take them down from their shelves and look at them again, like you would perhaps seek comfort in the familiar smell of your favourite book on a rainy day.

There’s the grateful smile every time he slips a coat over her shoulder while they are waiting for the helicopter to arrive because she always forgets to bring one out with her, even in mid-January.

The embarrassed chuckle when he teases her about the young intellectual called Albert who got admitted after an equal-rights demonstration gone wrong and whom she obviously has a crush on.

The giddy beam when he asks her how her date went, before she launches into a very detailed description of Albert’s hair.

The fake simper she gives John Conroy when she makes an excuse about how she really must hurry along now, “Don’t we, Melbourne?” and the conspiratorial grin she shares with him when he agrees and they get the hell away from that man to watch Netflix in her office.

The sad smile, when they can’t save their patient and she has to tell the family and he stands behind her, a comforting presence that straightens her spine, that whispers, “You did everything you could,” and gives her the strength to come back to work the next morning.

The relieved one, when a husband wraps her into a bear hug to thank her for saving his wife’s life and she pats his back, looks over his shoulder, smiles at Melbourne and says, “Well, it is our job, Sir.”

He could go on and on but his favourite is the one he cannot quite place:

He is decorating the room of Mrs. Thompson, an old lady without any living relatives, with flowers from his father’s shop while she’s asleep and suddenly Victoria’s standing in the doorway with that _smile_ on her face. He motions for her to stay quiet and she nods, waits for him and only shoots him a questioning glance when he brushes past her out of the room. He shrugs. “They would’ve gone to waste anyway.”

She falls into step with him and the smile is still in place when she stops him with a hand on his arm. “You’re very kind, William,” she says, like she means it, brushes a leaf from his shoulder and adds, “I can call you William, can’t I?” like she even has to ask, as if he could refuse her anything when she’s looking at him like that. He somehow manages to get out a confirmation and she nods, seemingly satisfied with herself, before he crosses over to the nurses station and she moves on to look after another patient.

(She won’t tell him until much later, but that’s her _Dear Lord, I’ve been so blind, haven’t I_?-smile, but when she does, he almost chokes on his heart and can’t stop gaping at her until her pager alerts them to another emergency.)

 

* * *

 

He can feel that something has changed, shifted into a shape he can’t yet recognize and so everything is the same and different at once.

He hands her everything she needs to stitch the gaping wound on a young girl’s forehead, just as he’s always done, but now he lingers a bit longer to watch her work with the utmost care, her tongue clasped between her teeth in complete concentration, her determination to do her best for her patient clearly palpable in the room.

She still hates football, but now she sits down next to him when he’s watching in the waiting room during a free moment and pretends that she’s interested in the game and wouldn’t just much rather draw his profile, his hands, his eyes, over and over again.

She loves the quiet nights, when they are both on duty and can just sit behind the nurses desk and read their respective books, talk about terrible movies or play each other their favourite songs.

He quietly loves them, too, but there are of course also the hectic days when it feels like a bus crashed into a train and an airplane fell on top of it and every single person involved lands in their emergency room. When there is blood everywhere and more people die than they can bear and they don’t know where their head is at, he tells her to breathe, she squeezes his hand in passing or he puts it on her shoulder and they say, “We will get through this,” and believe it.

 

At the end of one of those days, they slump down on a forgotten stretcher in a dark hallway. His arms are hurting from holding so many screaming patients down and her back feels like it’s going to break under its charge and before they know it, they have both fallen asleep.

A nurse goes by, sees them sitting there, leaning against the wall, their sides pressed together, her head on his shoulder and his head on top of hers and she smiles, takes out her phone and snaps a picture. It is a credit to how tired they are when they don’t even wake up when she uses the flash on her second try.

As they pass the nurses station the next morning and see the picture pinned to the board behind it, ‘ _Mr. and Mrs. Melbourne_ ’ in very neat handwriting underneath, they both blush and shoot daggers at everybody in a twenty feet radius, but neither of them makes a move to take it down.

“Well, you do look rather photogenic, Mr. Melbourne,” she quips and he does his best not to let the entire station see how his heart skips a beat before he catches on, raises his eyebrow in contemplation and answers, “Likewise, Mrs. Melbourne.”

They both make their exit and leave a heap of befuddled doctors and nurses behind. An entirely different betting pool gets started exactly thirty-seven seconds later.

 

* * *

 

The next time they meet (a day and a half later) they have the same expression on their face, like they have something important to say and don’t really know how to feel about it. In synch as they always are, they burst out with it at the exact same moment.

“I broke up with Albert.”

“I’m moving to Africa.”

Their eyes widen in shock, they stare at each other for a beat, then they turn around and scurry off into opposite directions.

 

He hunts her down during their midday break and has to ask “Have you seen Doctor Kent?” an awful lot of times before he finds her in the bookshop, studying a travel guide of Africa.

“Where exactly is it you’re going?” she asks as soon as she notices him, which she does without even looking up. He then explains how he applied to the position in Kenya before she came along, because he felt trapped, like he needed to do something more than _this_.

“Well,” she says very slowly, her fingers tracing Kenya on the map in her hand, “then it is not my position to stop you.”

She looks up and he swallows, asks her if she’s okay and she says yes, but doesn’t mean it. He wants to reach out to her, but doesn’t know how, he feels torn inside, like he has already lost something precious, something he didn’t even know he possessed.  Not finding the words he wants to say he points to the book instead.

“Do you really want to buy that?”

“Probably, yes.”

“And what happened with Albert?"

“Not sure.”

Seconds pass by in silence. A man, dressed all in grey squeezes past them.

“Do you really want to go to Africa?”

“I don’t know.”

 

* * *

 

Two simple truths:

She does not buy the book.

He does not go to Africa. The reason is this:

A few days later, she gently rouses him from where he fell asleep in a very uncomfortable chair and for a moment his drowsy mind can only focus on her beautiful blue eyes and it hits him like a brick wall that he wants to wake up to that sight every morning and _Dear Lord, I have been so blind_ , he can’t think of anything else while she coaxes him out of his chair and into the on-call room with the most comfortable beds, tucks him in, wishes him a good night. He’s back asleep before she even closes the door behind her.

 

* * *

 

He spends almost a week trying to find the right words to tell her about Africa, about her eyes and her smile, but they always seem to escape him as soon as she’s standing before or next to him, and so he just eventually blurts it out while they’re waiting in line for lasagne. Or, to be more truthful, the poor man tries and fails in the most unspectacular manner you could possibly imagine.

 

He interrupts her bubbling about béchamel sauce with a casual “So, Africa is off the table.”

Her mouth stops mid-sentence and forms a perfect ‘O’ for a moment before she pulls herself together.

“Why?”

“Some things didn’t turn out the way I expected them to.”

Another moment’s hesitation.

“Why _did_ you break up with Albert?”

She seems to be looking for something and he can’t tell if it’s just the right words she can’t find or if it’s something about him, the way he’s leaning against the railing behind him in an effort to appear casual, hiding his hands that are nervously clutching his wallet behind his back.

“He didn’t like my commitment to things that did not concern him.”

“Ah. The job then? Couldn’t take the long hours?”

“Something like that.”

There’s the sad smile again, but this time she’s trying to hide it from him and it makes him worry.

“Are you okay?” he asks again and takes one hand from his wallet, bringing it to his front, but he can’t quite get himself to propel it the short way up to her shoulder.

“I will be,” she says and means it and they both want to say more, want to say _everything_ , but they are up in the line, buy their lasagnes and don’t get to eat more than four bites before they are called away to save some idiot who thought it would be a good idea to set his own hair on fire in order to propose to his girlfriend.

“Stupid things people do for love, ey?” he says as he’s shaving off what’s left of the guy’s hair. Their eyes meet and suddenly their patient’s left eyebrow is gone too.

“Yeah.”

 

* * *

 

The story of how Nurse Melbourne accidentally shaved off a patient’s eyebrow spreads through the hospital like wildfire and he can’t show his face anywhere without one of his colleagues laughing or frowning at him and so he makes himself rare as best as he can. Of course, the cause for all his misery still manages to corner him the moment he steps out of his favourite on-call room.

She seems full of what he’d describe as happy nerves, as if she had too much coffee already, even though it is only five in the morning and he can’t quite fathom how she managed to assemble that much energy so early on in the day.

“William!” she calls when she’s still a few meters away from him, “I’ve been thinking –“

“You have?” he can’t help but quip, rubbing his eyes in a futile effort to get himself fully awake, but it doesn’t stop her in the slightest.

“Yes! And I’ve realized that I’ve never seen you out of these four walls and I would like to, sometime soon.”

He blinks.

“Should we step outside, then?”

“No! I mean, yes, we can do that. I’d probably do you some good, you’re awfully pale. But that’s not what I mean.”

“So what do you mean?”

She closes her eyes and breathes, very deeply, as if she’s reminding herself to be patient with a tired, old man who can’t be blamed for being a half-witted idiot.

“Okay. I’ve been taking these drawing and painting lessons for some time now, you know, with other people? There’s Emma, she makes the most delicious brownies and Harriett, she is so good with the – anyway, we’re doing full-length portraits now and I was wondering if you’d like to go with me and be my… subject?”

He can’t make any sense of her rambling. “Your… subject?”

“Yes! You know, my… model. So I could paint you!”

Finally, he understands her meaning and turns ruby red on the spot.

“Naked?” he squeaks and she immediately follows suit, blushing furiously as well.

“God, no!” she exclaims, “Do people ever really do that?”

“How would I know? You’re the expert!”

He’s sure as hell very awake now and they stand there in the doorway, trying very hard not to look at each other.

“Is there anything in particular I should be wearing, then?”

“You’ll do it?” She sounds awfully hopeful as she looks up at him and gives him one of his favourite smiles yet.

“Well, I’ll have to see first if my schedule is free-“

“It is, I’ve already checked. Thursday evening, we can walk over from the hospital. It’s going to be so much fun, don’t you worry!”

With that she raises up on her tiptoes, kisses his cheek and bounces off down the hallway.

“Just don’t wear scrubs!”

He stays rooted to the spot for much longer than he’d care to admit, marvelling at the way his day took such a turn in only a few short minutes before finally moving out of the doorway, a new spring in his step, not even noticing the way Doctor Peel is rubbing his eyebrow in a clearly provocative manner as he passes him on the way to his station.

 

The closer Thursday night creeps, though, the more his excitement gives way to dread and eventually pure panic. While he thankfully doesn’t shave off any other eyebrows, he’s clearly distracted as he changes bandages and hands her the antiseptic before she can even ask for it. He keeps turning her reaction to their toe-curling misunderstanding over in his head, tries to gauge from her behaviour whether or not she just asked him out on a date and agonizes over what he should wear to their… _appointment_.

On Thursday evening, the wait before her office is an excruciating one, but he needn’t have worried. When she steps out of her door, she looks just as he left her fifteen minutes ago to get changed, with her hair still all over the place, except that now she’s wearing a clean, if a bit rumpled blouse and jeans instead of her scrubs that are usually stained with one body fluid or another at the end of the day. As she tries to put her watch on her wrist and lock the door at the same time, she’s still unmistakably the young woman that stubbornly carved her path through a world that wanted nothing more than to take her down and became a kindling light in his life, a friend, against all the odds.

Without hesitation, he moves forward and fastens her watch for her. She blows a strand of hair out of her face, thanks him and only takes a short glance at his choice of clothes as she closes the door and pockets the key.

“I wonder what colour I’ll use for that,” she remarks, gesturing to the red waistcoat he’s wearing over a simple white shirt. Then she sees the green coat hanging over his arm, realizes she forgot her own in her office, shakes her head at herself in annoyance, fishes out her key and disappears back inside and that’s that.

 

She walks him to a bright and friendly-looking room where everybody is on a first name basis and he takes an immediate liking to Emma and her brownies. At first, he feels a bit awkward when she places him on a high chair, doesn’t know where to put his hands, what to do with his legs or where to look while she has a very drawn out discussion with Harriet, as they can’t decide if his waistcoat is more of a lipstick or cherry shade of red, until their instructor, a firm looking woman called Lehzen, reminds them that the colouring won’t come until much later and that they should please concentrate on the outline first.

Then, Emma’s daughter Lucy, a nine-year-old girl who seems to have a penchant for astronomy, strikes up a conversation with him and he’s slowly relaxing as they are talking shop when suddenly Victoria starts laughing in the middle of one of her strokes.

His insecurity instantly crashes back in and he hastily looks down on himself to see what’s wrong with him, if maybe one of his nightmares came true and he forgot to zip his pants up (which is thankfully not the case) until he realizes that Victoria is gesturing to his shoes. Or, more precisely, the trainers he always wears at the hospital.  In all his haste and nervousness, he must have put them back on instead of the very nice dress shoes he dug out from the very back of his wardrobe especially for this occasion.

“Oh,” he breathes, his face probably taking on the ominous colour of his waistcoat.  “Maybe you could just leave them for now and I’ll wear proper shoes next time?”

“No,” she determines and for a moment he thinks he’s ruined everything, “I like it. It’s very… you. You know, like you’re always ready to be there when someone needs you.”

He knows she means it, but being the emotionally stunted idiot that he is, he still tries to wear his dress shoes to the next meeting. She notices, though, before they even leave the hospital and makes him change back into his trainers, even going as far as pulling rank on him, which he finds entirely unnecessary.

He only succeeds to act miffed for about five seconds though, because she forgot her coat _again_ and he lets it go to tease her mercilessly instead.

 

* * *

 

In the following months, his life transforms into a colourful storm of an adventure, with her at the centre of it, always leading him to new places, showing him new details in things he already knows.

He keeps accompanying her to her drawing lessons, even after he is relieved from his duties as her mannequin. Lucy takes a shine to him, which is no wonder seen as he gives her a celestial chart that’s probably bigger than the ceiling of her bedroom for her birthday. He buys a kettle and brings in very fine tea and always keeps their cups full and their minds entertained with ridiculous stories from the hospital, although he never mentions The Eyebrow-Incident and Victoria thankfully keeps quiet about it, too.

He feels perfectly at ease until they have the preposterous idea to make him try his hand at their art as well.  After weeks of persuasion, he finally agrees to draw a portrait of Victoria and although he doesn’t feel like he can ever do her justice, he quite enjoys to get to wave an eye colour chart around _her_ face for a change and to have a perfectly good excuse to stare at her for hours without worrying about looking like a lovesick fool.

 

She doesn’t stop at that, though. He has no idea how she manages to wrap their schedules around all their activities, but she drags him to museums, horse-riding lessons, experimental restaurants, the opera and once even to a millinery. On Emma’s wedding anniversary, they take Lucy to the planetarium in Greenwich Park and during the holiday season she browses through what feels to William’s feet like every single gift shop in London and then some, but he willingly follows her everywhere she goes.

Only when she asks him to take up dancing he hesitates for a moment, a haunting look passing over his face.

“One day you’ll have to tell me about that,” she says softly.

He can’t follow, frowns and asks, “About what?”

“The reason for your sadness.”

Before he can catch on, she has already made her way down the hall.

 

To her surprise, he turns out to be an excellent dancer. Confidently, he leads her over the dancefloor and she always hovers on the edge between being completely at ease, knowing exactly where he’s going to step next and simply losing herself in the feel of his body against hers, the look in his eyes, his hand on the small of her back.

 

* * *

 

A new bakery opens up a few meters down the road and their cinnamon rolls quickly become the talk of the hospital. Everybody wants them and they are usually sold out before any mortal soul even thinks about getting out of bed.

Naturally, Victoria leaves her house at five in the morning just to nonchalantly present him with a perfect roll at the end of an especially tiring nightshift and it is simply too much.

She keeps giving him these things, words and smiles and pastries that smell like heaven and he feels like he really must give something back, right now, so he finds himself saying something along the lines of “I love your eyebrows,” without really meaning to.

She laughs, a beautiful, full-bodied thing and plops down on the desk before him.

“Thank you. As long as you don’t shave them off, you mean?”

He sighs. “You’re never going to let me live that one down, are you?”

“Nope,” she replies merrily, popping the ‘p’ as he peers into the bag.

“There’s only one?”

“Yes. There were all these people – even children, can you imagine - in the queue behind me, looking at me with their sad eyes, begging me not to take their cinnamon roll from them and I simply didn’t have the heart to take two. Don’t worry, this one’s all yours.”

Is she even real? Did she fall down straight from the heavens? If it weren’t for the fact that he couldn’t possibly dream up something as perfect as her, he would seriously be questioning his own sanity at this point. As it is, he simply breaks the cinnamon roll in half, gives her the bigger piece and happily drowns in a sea of sugar, easy chatter and pure, heart wrenching love. 

 

* * *

 

Reality roars its ugly head as a young family is delivered to their emergency room after a fatal car crash.

They can only declare the mother’s time of death.

The father bleeds out under their hands, constantly asking about his family’s well-being.

The son cries for his parents until they sedate him and watch powerlessly as he dies on the table.

They are both shaken to the core after seeing all these lives puffed out in the blink of an eye, by their inability to rekindle their fire. Yes, they have seen people die before, but this is the first time where _everybody dies_ and he just can’t take it.

She can see he’s crying as he storms out of the room and when she finds the strength to go after him, he is nowhere to be found.

She only passes through paediatrics on a hunch, because she’s getting desperate, but that’s where she finds him in the doorway of an unoccupied room, staring at the empty bed inside without really seeing it.  She doesn’t recognize him at first, the way he holds himself in stark contrast to his usually straight posture. He looks utterly broken by the weight he’s carrying on his shoulders.

Tentatively, she stands behind him and puts a hand on his shoulder, as gently as she can. He doesn’t react at first and they just stand there, for how long she cannot say, until he draws in a deep, shaky breath and says, without turning:

“This is where my son died.”

Her heart drops, her mind goes blank. She can’t think of anything to say to that, so she just slowly strokes her thumb over his arm. Minutes pass. He doesn’t add anything else and eventually she wraps her arm around his back and steers him to what she’s come to refer to as ‘their’ on-call room.

 

He stands frozen in the middle of the room as she moves over to the bed, draws back the covers and motions for him to get in.

“Come on. You must be exhausted.”

It takes him a moment but he eventually complies, shuffles over to the bed, takes off his shoes and lies down, his back to her, his legs drawn up and he looks so vulnerable that the need to shield him from everything the world might throw at him simply gets too strong to choke down any longer so she gets in behind him, pulls the covers up over the both of them and holds him to her.

“Is this alright?” she asks quietly and although he does not answer, he takes the hand she has draped over his arm, kisses it before intertwining their fingers and pulling her a little closer.

She can feel him crying silently against her, but after a while he seems to calm down and eventually they both fall into a deep, dreamless sleep, their exhaustion finally taking its toll.

 

He is not there when she wakes up. Instead, she finds a cup of still hot coffee and a crisp cinnamon roll on the nightstand next to her. She barely has time to eat her breakfast and take a quick shower before her shift begins. As she enters trauma unit 2, her wet hair fastened into a messy bun, he’s already there, forcing the drawers open, preparing the IV-lines and informing their patient of the procedure in his usual, calming manner.

They work together perfectly as always, agree that it’s probably just a simple dizzy spell but to do some tests anyway, just to be sure, and she’s about to move on to the next patient, assuring the charming old lady that she is in the best possible care, when she turns around, already halfway out the door and waits for him to catch her eye.

“If you need me…”

He gets her meaning.

“… I’ll know where to find you.”

He knows it’s true.

He also knows now that she is a terrible snorer and blanket hog and that information somehow only manages to endear her even further to him. He wants to share everything with her, but he just doesn’t know how to let go of his past, of all the memories and pain he’s been dragging around with him for so long, thinking it was the only thing tying him to this earth, that he was simply alive because he hadn’t yet died like everybody around him.  

Then she came along, gave him solace along with her smiles, a new direction, a new meaning. Somehow, she gave him the strength to offer her courage, although he had none.  He is so, so in love with her, but he knows he can’t cross that line, as long as he’ll risk to pull her down with his weight, to extinguish her bright flame with his tired, old soul.

And so, he continues to stand behind her, a comforting presence that straightens her spine, leads her across the dance floor, puts the final touches to her portrait and he wonders how it can be possible to be so exquisitely happy and miserable at the same time.


	2. Living Daylights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This would've been finished way sooner if I hadn't lost 2000 words to an impromptu computer reboot. Rewriting it was a pain in the neck and I was about ready to throw in the towel but your wonderful comments managed to keep me motivated. People always say how much comments mean, but you have all made my day multiple times, thank you so much for that!
> 
> This chapter includes Melbourne talking about his children like I talked about in my note, so trigger warning for that. I tried to show the emotional impact without overdoing it and I hoped I managed to deal with it in a respectful manner.

 

> **living daylights** : _a person's eyes; more recently, the life force or consciousness._

 

* * *

 

It’s three in the morning and his patient can’t breathe. He calls for a doctor, but they are hopelessly understaffed and nobody comes. He can’t intubate and he knows the man needs an emergency circothyrotomy, but he’s not allowed to perform it himself. He can hear Victoria’s voice over the frantic beeping coming from the room next to him. He calls her name, panic creeping into his voice.

“I’m sorry, I can’t!” she calls back. “Just give me a minute.”

His patient is turning purple. He does not have another minute. He takes a scalpel and he makes the cut.

 

* * *

 

The man, his name was Dave, dies anyway. It’s not his fault. He knows it’s not. Victoria tells him he did the only right thing and the medical report says the same thing: Dave died of internal abdominal bleeding, not of asphyxiation.

Those who want Melbourne gone don’t care in the slightest. They say he overstepped his boundaries and put him on suspension. He’s too tired to fight them, thinks that maybe it’s for the best. He imagines helping out in the flower shop, his parents aren’t getting any younger and his brother could surely use the help. He would still be able to see Victoria from time to time, but she would be free to build her own life, perhaps with someone young and unblemished, someone worthy of her.

Victoria, however, is not at all ready to let him go. She takes up her sword and soon about a dozen stories about her bringing the entire board to its knees start circling the hospital. Some claim that she threatened to bring the entire wrath of her family down on them, others that she handed in her own resignation letter or that she took full responsibly. He doesn’t know what to believe and she is not at all ready to share.

-

She is sitting there in her office, filling out paperwork, trying not to be moved by any of his inquiries while he is getting more and more worked up. She won’t tell him how she lied to them all, told them that she ordered him to perform the circothyrotomy. She knows he wouldn’t appreciate it in the slightest.

“Please!” he exclaims. “I can’t allow you to jeopardize your position on my account!”

She finally interrupts her scribbling to look up at him.

“Please,” she repeats, calm as ever, “allow me.”

She sets her pen down, all of her attention and determination now fixed on him.

“If I lose you I will have no one. Doctor Peel has always wanted my position and I cannot defend it alone.”

“Of course you can,” he replies instantly, “You are one of the strongest –“

Her determination gives way to desperation.

“No. You tried to save that man’s life and you will not be punished for it. You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I won’t let them take that away from me, no matter what it takes. I _won’t let you_ forsake me. Is that clear?”

She is clearly upset now, her breathing deep and troubled and although she did not mean to say all that out loud she cannot say that she regrets it.

He doesn’t seem to know what to do with her words, it looks like he wants to say something but he’s holding himself back and she wants to take his hand but it’s out of her reach. Both of their eyes are suspiciously wet and for a moment she can’t see him clearly, his silhouette only a blur in her vision and she chokes it all down, her fear, her love, her words.

 _Don’t you know, William? Don’t you know I would do_ anything _for you?_

* * *

 

He comes back to work the next day. She doesn’t know who moves first, but suddenly they are standing there in the middle of the hallway, her arm wrapped around his shoulders, her hand in his hair, both of his hands on her back and she never wants to let go.

 

* * *

 

At the beginning of their next shift, after she has redone her bun over three times and it just won’t hold, he insists on braiding her hair. She revels in the feeling of him sitting so close behind her, his fingers combing carefully through her long tresses and she knows it’s his way of saying _'Thank you for that stupid thing you did for me'_. His work looks somewhat erratic and a few strands of her hair keep falling out of it, but she fixes it as best as she can with a few pins when he’s not looking. Even though the whole thing ends up looking like a huge mess, she’s never loved a hairstyle more in her life and she somehow manages to keep it more or less intact until the next meeting of their art group.

 -

He’s standing next to Emma at the sink, she’s rinsing plates and teacups and he’s drying them, but he’s turned in a way that allows him to observe Victoria where she’s standing talking to Lucy from across the room. She turns slightly and their eyes meet and she gives him a bright, carefree smile. He carefully files it away for safekeeping, somewhere between the gentle and the grateful one, smiling back at her all the while. Without him noticing, the pile of dishes in need of drying before him keeps growing until Emma eventually nudges him with her elbow.

“Are you going to just stand there and watch her all night?”

He doesn’t reply, just takes another plate, dries it and sets it aside.

“I don’t know what you’re waiting for, William,” she continues, “I’ve seen the way she looks at you. It’s not like she’s going to say no.”

At that, he turns around to face Emma instead. For a moment, he can’t quite grasp that he’s been found out, that he’s really as transparent as he’s always feared. He frowns, contemplates for a moment to play dumb as his heart beats wildly in his chest, but he’s just sick of lying and pretending and _not saying it_ so he sighs and gives in. Emma is his friend and for all he knows it might do him some good to talk about it with someone.

“But she wouldn’t know what she’d be saying yes to,” he says quietly and he can see Emma’s puzzled look, so he elaborates. “There are some… things she should know about me. Things I should tell her before anything can… happen. I want to tell her, but then I open my mouth and _nothing_ comes out. I just don’t know how. I’m not even sure I should… burden her with my ghosts. She could do so much better than me.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that, William. I mean, have you seen her? She’s tiny but she could probably take it up with anything.”

They share a fond smile but sober up almost immediately.

“She was absolutely miserable when she first came here,” Emma discloses after a few seconds, “She tried to hide it, but work was rough and she often looked as if she had spent hours crying. You could see it in her art, too. She was somewhat reticent to use bright colours, it would drive Lehzen up the walls.”

Emma chuckles at the memory and puts Victoria’s favourite teacup on the draining rack before him. It’s a simple, white cup, but Victoria painted a beautiful picture of her childhood dog Dash on it that William traces gently with his fingers before taking the mug and drying it off.

“But then her paintings become more colourful and she started to smile and talk about you more and more. It was unbearable, really.”

He snorts. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

Emma laughs in response.

“Yes. And then she brought you around and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her more alive. You both glow when you’re in each others company.”

“I was just there for her when she needed somebody.”

“Exactly. Maybe she would like to do the same for you.”

He sighs as she places the last mug before him.

“Braveheart, William,” she says, dries off her hands and joins the others.

 

* * *

 

 They are walking back to the hospital, each of them with a piece of late-night pizza in their hand and she steals his topping, just like Augustus used to and he knows this is it.

This is where he breaks free, takes control of his own destiny, where he refuses to play the tragic hero only skirting along the edges of his own life for another second, where he doesn’t let faith take this beautiful, magical thing away from him, too. This is where he stands up and says:  No more lies. This is who I am. This is who I’ve lost. This is who I love.   

He asks her to sit down on the steps before a very narrow, ancient looking house and she indulges him, sits so close that their hips are touching, doesn’t say anything and patiently waits for him to speak.

It takes him a while to collect his courage, he opens and closes his mouth several times without a single sound making its way to her, but then there’s Emma’s voice in his head, saying _Braveheart, William_ , and he pulls himself together, exhales and asks, “Did you ever read the files?”

Maybe she already knows. Maybe he won’t have to go through it all.

She takes her time, looks at him as if she wants to make sure that they are on the same page, that he really is finally opening up to her, taking the hand she’s been offering him for so long. She sets her slice of pizza aside.

“No,” she says very slowly, “I thought about it, but no. It didn’t seem right.”

Of course she would never do such a thing, and so he takes her hand and tells her everything.

 -

Meeting Caroline during his time in med school and falling in love.

Holding his tiny daughter during the few precious hours of her life, feeling her last, struggling breath and then nothing but absolute, horrible stillness.  

Losing Caroline to grief, alcohol and distance.

Hearing his boy’s bones break during his epileptic episodes that got only worse after his mother’s departure. Holding his hand at night, never leaving his bedside until he died a sudden unexpected death in epilepsy.

Deciding to become a nurse instead of a doctor, because there were too many bills to pay, because he couldn’t pay his student loans off, because while the doctors tried to save his children’s life, the nurses were there to look after their souls.

Not being able to bear working in paediatrics for more than a month and requesting a transfer to trauma. Feeling utterly useless, knowing that nothing would ever be enough to forget the feel, the sound, the sight of his children dying. Applying for the position in Africa after hearing of Caroline’s death.

Meeting _her_ , helping her, caring for her.

 “I held both of my children as they died and I thought nothing would make sense ever again, but then… Through you I’ve been given a reason to continue.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” they say at the same time and mean it.

 He doesn’t let go of her hand the entire time. They are both crying and she pulls him into her arms, tucks his head into the crook of her neck, holds him, caresses his cheeks, wipes away his tears and he feels like he can finally breathe.

 

* * *

 

 She takes him home with her that night, gives him one of her old university t-shirts that must have been way too big for her but fits him just perfectly and an old pair of colour-stained sweatpants her uncle forgot at her place after helping her with painting her living room in an inviting shade of yellow (maze, as she informs him the next morning). She doesn’t even let him look into the direction of the sofa, immediately bridges the gap he respectfully left between them and as she snuggles up against his back he is reduced to accepting the fact that he’s definitely going to be the small spoon in this, dare he think of it that way, relationship.

He has to get up in the middle of the night in order to get his coat because a sleeping Victoria does definitely not like to share her blankets. She even keeps tugging on his final barrier against the cold, but luckily he was smart enough to put his coat on properly, so he doesn’t have to shiver all the way to his own death.

 -

When he wakes up in the morning, it’s to the sight of what he now knows to be her glaucous-coloured eyes and everything looks a bit brighter than it did the day before. She must have covered him up again as soon as she woke up and discovered the pitiful state she left him in because he feels wonderfully warm under both his blanket and her gaze.

“Good morning,” she says gently as she brushes a curl of his hair away from his forehead. Then her hand finds his underneath the covers and he strokes her palm with his thumb and his heart starts speeding up and surely this is it, she’s right there and his eyelids are fluttering closed and –

“Would you like to bake bread with me?”

\- 

They bake bread and eat too much of it while it’s still warm. They spend the entire day cooped up in her apartment, their stomachs feeling somewhat funny, but they have an inkling that it’s not entirely due to the bread. He finds the portrait she made of him hanging over her desk in her study as he’s looking for a deck of cards, which she eventually finds at the back of a kitchen drawer. They teach each other new games, drink cup after cup of tea and laugh until their bellies hurt even more. They push all the furniture in her living room aside and practice the foxtrot until it’s dark outside and they are both exhausted, so they decide to eat the rest of the bread and watch Netflix in her bed. As they didn’t change out of their pyjamas all day, they just stand shoulder to shoulder (or rather shoulder to elbow) in front of the mirror in her bathroom as they brush their teeth and they know that this is what home looks like.

Home feels like sliding into bed together, a tender kiss to her temple, her arm draped over his middle, their fingers intertwined. Reaching for his coat at two in the morning and trying to find his socks at three a.m. without disturbing the snoring blanket fort next to him. Waking up to the feel of her lips pressed against his and getting lost in it without ever opening his eyes, just feeling, feeling, feeling, the curve of her hips, her jaw, her legs sliding over his, her fingers in his hair and her hand cupping his cheek. Her breath and delighted laughter against him that make kissing her much harder and infinitely better at the same time.

The delightful dizziness that persists even as they have to rush to get to work on time. Ducking under the same umbrella while hurrying to the bus, sitting next to each other and holding hands during the journey, her head resting comfortably on his shoulder.

Her dragging him to the oculist because of the terrible headaches he always gets from reading all the patients’ records. Spending Saturday morning at the optician with her placing frame after frame on his nose although he really just wants these Harry Potter glasses that, according to her, make him look like a scatty college professor. Refusing to bend down one more time so she can’t make him try another pair on and has no other choice but to let him have his way.

 

* * *

 

She can’t help but laugh as she sees him with them for the first time, sitting behind the nurses station and reading a file in the middle of their night shift and says “You are absolutely ridiculous,” but sounds very fond of him while doing so.

“Yes,” he agrees, “I have honestly no idea why you keep me around. I would’ve ditched me a long time ago.”

As she sits down next to him, he realizes that he can now spot new details he never saw before (is that a freckle?) but then she steals his glasses from him in order to try them on herself and even with his derailing eyesight he is absolutely sure that they don’t make her look like a scatty college professor _at all_. He’s unconsciously drifting closer to her face as she squints at him for a few seconds before she takes them off and carefully places them back on his nose.

“There,” she says, “much clearer.”

Only now does she seem to realize what he said and she absentmindedly takes his hand, thinks very hard for a few seconds, exhales and looks him square in the eyes.

“Do you remember that time you decorated Mrs. Thompson’s room with these flowers?”

He remembers.

 

* * *

 

He starts showering her with flowers after that. He fills her office and apartment with orchids, gardenias, gladiolus and so many others she sometimes can’t even name. He even takes to looking after them himself because her talent for healing human beings does definitely not run over to taking care of plants. However, she starts suspecting that he only uses it as an excuse to spend more time in her company; surely no flower has to be watered quite that often. The poor fool really seems to have some trouble grasping the whole concept of being in a relationship with her.

Every time she invites him to stay over, he looks as star struck as if it were the first time she ever extended that invitation. He never brings over his own pyjama, either, apparently fearful of looking presumptuous. Eventually she loses her patience and shows up uninvited at his flat one day.

He looks quite dishevelled as he opens the door, stares at her in shock for a beat, says, “Give me a minute,” and closes the door again, leaving her standing in the hallway. Through the door she hears dampened clattering, cabinet doors opening and closing, hurried footsteps and extensive cursing. It takes her a few seconds, but when she realizes what he’s doing her heavy confusion instantly gives way to light amusement.

“William!” she calls through the door, “I don’t care how your den looks right now, just let me in, will you?”

The footsteps stop for a few seconds, then they come closer and eventually the door opens, a sheepish looking William appearing before her.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” he mumbles, scratching the back of his head in the way he always does when he’s embarrassed.

“Never mind,” she retorts cheerfully, giving him a quick peck on the lips as she brushes past him into his apartment, “I only came to pack a few of your pyjamas anyway.”

 -

She takes a formidable-looking dressing gown with her as well and takes to wearing it herself whenever he’s not at home with her. It dwarfs her tiny frame, but it smells like him and she loves bundling up with it on the couch in the evening, watching TV or reading a book, a cup of tea in one hand and oftentimes her phone in the other, texting him when he’s on night duty and she’s not.

It’s always a relatively slow affair though, seen as he still hasn’t learned how to use his thumbs and types painfully slowly with the forefinger of his right hand, his tongue clasped between his teeth, his glasses sitting low on his nose. Once, he gets called away to resuscitate a patient twice before finishing one single message.

 -

On one of those nights, she sleepily drops him a ‘ _love you’_ at the end of a conversation about squeezing the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube without realizing it, setting her phone aside and falling asleep immediately afterwards.

When she sees him the next time, he looks very nervous as he hands her a bouquet of red and white chrysanthemums, only absent-mindedly accepting her thank you kiss, taking her hands and letting them go again, fidgeting for almost a minute, in- and exhaling deeply multiple times and she’s about to asks him what’s wrong when he suddenly blurts “I love you, too,” cups her face with his two hands, presses a quick but passionate kiss to her lips that takes her breath away and makes her head spin before letting go of her and hurrying away down the hall.

It takes her a while to put it all together, but when she does, she pulls him into the nearest supply closet at their earliest convenience. Although she really meant to talk it out, explain what happened and say it properly, she just ends up kissing the living daylights out of him. He doesn’t seem to mind at all.

\- 

Still, he doesn’t join her in the same bed in their on-call room when she’s already fallen asleep until she gives him a stern talking to, not buying into his excuse that he’d like to keep his blankets for a whole night, thank you very much.

 

* * *

 

 

She supposes his constant shyness should get on her nerves with time, but the opposite is the case. Her life has always been moulded by a certain matter of course. Of course was she the brightest student in her class. Of course did she get that expensive car for her eighteenth birthday. Of course did she choose to become a doctor and got accepted into Cambridge.

The wonder in his eyes when she holds his hand in the supermarket or just calmly straightens her hair when they get caught making out in the supply closet by Nurse Jenkins and smirks smugly at him when Nurse Skerrett tells them that everyone lost their money in the betting pool because it took far longer for them to get caught than anyone thought, the way he almost loses his grip on his cup, some of the warm tea burning his fingers, when she calls him her boyfriend in their art group for the first time and the way the tips of his ears burn when Lucy manages to trap them under a mistletoe and Victoria just takes his hand, raises on her tiptoes and kisses him in front of all their friends make her feel more cherished than ever before in her life.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: I still can't spell circothyrotomy without looking it up. If you find any mistakes, please point them out to me!   
> This was also supposed to go much further, but I hit writers block pretty hard and am going to be pretty busy for some time, so I thought 3800 words is better than nothing and decided to cut off the chapter here. There will hopefully be a continuation but I can't promise anything. I hope you enjoyed it & let me know what you think in the comments :)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, here's the deal:  
> I set out to write a cute, fluffy and relatively short modern AU with Doctor Kent and Nurse Melbourne starring as lovesick, lifesaving angels, but I kept writing and writing and they just wouldn't kiss and then I realized that Melbourne would have to deal with his emotional trauma from losing his family before he could ever truly start a new life with Victoria. I think that with the way they are portrayed in the series, they could have one of the most healthy, supportive and loving relationships you could possibly imagine, if only they would live in a time where they can freely choose who they are and who they love and really, what's the point of setting them up in a century where men are actually allowed to have feelings if not to let Melbourne deal with them properly?  
> The thing is, writing about losing one's children is nothing I would want to do under any other circumstances, but seen as that's what's happened to the poor man, I don't really see a way around it. Although I did my best and have already written it out, I'm not sure I did it in an appropriate manner and decided not to publish it as of yet. What do you guys think? Would you like to read the rest of the story or should I just leave it here? All your thoughts on this matter or anything else are greatly appreciated!


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